Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw urged social media platforms to ensure a fair revenue distribution for content creators while speaking at the Digital News Publishers Association Conclave on Thursday.
He specified that the share should be fair for all creators irrespective of whether they are established news organisations or independent creators in remote regions.
"Social media platforms must also share revenue in a fair way with the people who are creating the content, whether it is news persons, conventional media, creators sitting in far-flung areas, influencers, the professors and researchers who are disseminating their work using the platforms," Vaishnaw stated.
The minister further requested all social media platforms to reimagine their revenue sharing systems and said that if not accepted voluntarily, the country may have to opt for a legal way to ensure fair distribution of revenue.
“I will request all the platforms to rethink your revenue sharing policies. If this is not done voluntarily, there are so many countries which have shown the path to get it done in a legal way.”
The remark is being viewed as an indication that India could resort to regulatory mechanisms similar to global precedents mandating tech platforms to compensate news publishers for content usage.
Calling for equitable monetisation models across platforms he added, "Everywhere the principle now has to be set right."
While addressing the conclave Vaishnaw emphasised on the importance of trust. According to the minister, trust is the binding force of the various tangents of the human society including media, legislature and judiciary.
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He highlighted that it has been under challenge lately and blamed deepfakes and disinformation available on the social media platforms for this hurdle.
Vaishnaw underlined that deepfakes, disinformation campaigns and synthetically generated videos are progressively undermining public faith in institutions, including media.
"The core tenet of trust is under threat. It is coming in different forms — deepfakes, things which have never happened anywhere; disinformation.. creating synthetically generated pictures of well respected people, creating videos which have no correlation to AI; and all that content, so-called content/news, when it reaches common people — they start questioning the basic structure of the society," Vaishnaw explained.
Further, the minister also pushed social media platforms to take responsibility for the content they host, including deepfakes and disinformation.
"Platforms must understand the importance of reinforcing trust in the institutions which human society has created over thousands of years. Platforms must take the responsibility for the content that is hosted by them," he emphasised.
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